Adobe on Monday formally announced Adobe Creative Suite 5, the latest release of its design and creative workflow software that delivers full-version upgrades to all of the company's flagship creative tools in order to offer workflow enhancements to designers and developers.

Featuring integration with online content and digital marketing measurement and optimization capabilities for the first time, Creative Suite 5 products include access to Omniture technologies, to capture, store and analyze information generated by Web sites and other sources. Additionally, a brand new component, Adobe Flash Catalyst, joins the Creative Suite, ushering in the ability to design interactive content without writing code and improve the collaborative process between designer and developer.

"While Creative Suite 5 continues Adobes storied history of delivering astonishing new creative features, this release puts us front and center of the big issues facing publishers and creatives worldwide how to build businesses around digital assets and content," said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer, Adobe. "With Omniture Web technology were integrating critical business analytics directly into the creative process, shortening the time it takes to create and deploy high-impact content."

Due to to ship within the next 30 days, the Adobe CS5 product family also enables the creation of content and applications for Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2, which Adobe says are optimized for high performance on mobile screens and designed to take advantage of native device capabilities for a richer, more immersive user experience.

Adobe offers a Creative Suite 5 editions comparison tool that breaks down the components included with each suite edition:

New Features

Among the suites major new features are:
Truer Edge technology in Photoshop CS5 Extended offers improved edge detecting technology and masking results in less time. Photoshop CS5 Extended also lets users remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels with Content-Aware Fill.
InDesign CS5 powers the transition to digital publishing with new interactive documents and enhanced eReader device support.
Native 64-bit support in Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects enables customers to work more fluidly on high resolution projects.
New Text Layout Framework in Flash Professional CS5 provides professional-level typography capabilities with functions like kerning, ligatures, tracking, leading, threaded text block and multiple columns.
New stroke options in Illustrator CS5 allow users to create strokes of variable widths and precisely adjust the width at any point along the stroke.
The NVIDIA GPU accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine allows Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 users to open projects faster, refine effects-rich HD sequences in real time and play back complex projects without rendering.
The new Roto Brush tool in After Effects helps users save time by isolating moving foreground elements in a fraction of the normal time.
Dreamweaver CS5 now supports popular content management systems Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, allowing designers to get accurate views of dynamic Web content from within Dreamweaver.
Adobe CS Live

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium also integrates with new Adobe CS Live, a set of five online services that accelerate key aspects of the creative workflow and enable designers to focus on creating their best work. CS Live online services are complimentary for a limited time and currently include:
Adobe BrowserLab, a tool for testing Web site content across different browsers and operating systems.
Adobe CS Review, which enables online design reviews directly from within Creative Suite 5 applications.
Access to Acrobat.com services, such as Adobe ConnectNow Web conferencing, to enhance discussion and information exchange with colleagues and clients around the globe.
Adobe Story, a collaborative script writing tool that improves production and post-production workflows in CS5 Production Premium.
SiteCatalyst NetAverages from Omniture, which provides Web usage data that helps reduce the guesswork early in the creative process when designing for Web and mobile.

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Creative Suite 5 and its associated point products are scheduled to ship within 30 days, with availability through Adobe Authorized Resellers, the Adobe Store and Adobe Direct Sales. At 11:00 am ET (8:00 am PT) today, Adobe will offer a live streaming preview of CS5 through its website.

No 64 bit Illustrator no upgrades for my firm, guess we'll stay on CS3 for another 2 years. Can't stand these bundles either, we end up paying for a bunch of apps we never use, what a waste. I hate the monopoly Adobe has become in the creative biz.

Wow look at those prices! This practise of 'bundling' apps together is egregious as well. If you want to buy Photoshop you have to buy a bunch of other stuff that you may not want. It's like buying some eggs at the grocers only to be told you cannot have them unless you buy bacon too! Both the pricing and the bundling are indications of Adobe 'abusing their dominant market position' as the legal term has it. I cannot understand why the EU has not hauled them in and told them to play fair with consumers.

Believe nothing, no matter where you heard it, not even if I have said it, if it does not agree with your own reason and your own common sense.Buddha

Wow look at those prices! This practise of 'bundling' apps together is egregious as well.

Yep. I need Photoshop and Illustrator (or something to replace them) and After Effects (to play around and see what all it can do) and I might end up paying the same amount getting them separate as I do in the bundle

The game for Adobe is that they have gotten so entrenched in the market that they are the 'standard' and so they can charge professional level prices. They do a nice education discount but getting that license isn't easy. You can't fake it and say you are a student. You have to prove it. In detail.

And they only do a 'consumer' version of Photoshop (elements) which is decent but programs like Pixelmator are catching up. And I think they still do a Premiere junior. But nothing else from what I recall.

Mine was $199. How'd you get yours for $99? Even still, Photoshop is still a good program and worth the $200 for me.

I phoned up Apple and begged . Actually I did, I had just bought the previous update a few months earlier and asked if they'd cut me a break and they did. I buy through the business department as I get a lot of stuff. But yes, $199 was the full price but still one heck of a deal for all those apps, and what apps!!!

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

I phoned up Apple and begged . Actually I did, I had just bought the previous update a few months earlier and asked if they'd cut me a break and they did. I buy through the business department as I get a lot of stuff. But yes, $199 was the full price but still one heck of a deal for all those apps, and what apps!!!

Keep in mind also that that was from either previous suite. Not like Adobe where CS 3 to 4 was like a bump of $500 and CS1 or 2 to CS4 was like $800

I phoned up Apple and begged . Actually I did, I had just bought the previous update a few months earlier and asked if they'd cut me a break and they did. I buy through the business department as I get a lot of stuff. But yes, $199 was the full price but still one heck of a deal for all those apps, and what apps!!!

Wow, that's funny, I kinda did the same thing. Except for me, I had just purchased FCS 2 about 6 weeks before FCS 3 came out and there was no word on these forums that the release of FCS 3 was imminent. Needless to say, when I saw them announce FCS 3, I was pretty pissed. I called up the business dept. and like you, I asked if there was anything they could do. They were very accommodating and refunded the full upgrade price (what I paid) of FCS 2 and didn't charge me a restocking fee either. And yes, awesome apps!

Well Aperture's a competitor to Lightroom, not Photoshop. I find Aperture 3 to be wonderful, though. I used iPhoto for a couple of years and picked up Aperture and got the hang of it in no time. I could probably benefit at some point from adding in a pure image editor like Photoshop, but at this point I just don't see the need.

Aperture's editing tools are quite good but not as extensive as Photoshop's.

Usually it is the features they leave OUT which is what makes Apple software a joy to use.

Oh, Agreed! That's very true. The nice thing about Aperture 3 is I can do everything in one place - managing photos, uploading them, editing them. No need to open up separate apps like in iPhoto. iPhoto's own tools are ok - very good for quick, one-touch corrections that usually look very good, but I always found my self using its "edit in an external program" feature and having to go into Photoshop or Pixelmator.

What I like about Aperture in particular is its interface: clean and well-organized.

When, if ever, will Adobe realize the drop in their stock underscores their business/marketing approach. Ya think they'd try to emulate Apple when it comes to putting their software into as many hands as possible.

They do a nice education discount but getting that license isn't easy. You can't fake it and say you are a student. You have to prove it. In detail...

not true. just take the student with you when you go to the bookstore. they just need their student i.d. i suppose it wouldn't hurt to bring their class schedule, but that's really all there is to it. hell, i know a woman who is an employee of the u.c. system (the hospital) and she even gets discounts in the u.c. bookstore.

don't think it's that difficult. bottom line: how much is it worth to you to get the software at a decent price.

Apple's smart here because they've got a complete photo-management system. Get em when they're just starting out, with iPhoto. They'll get interested in photography because iPhoto makes it so easy to make photos look good with just a couple of clicks. Then, when the hardcore iPhoto user finally wields a more expensive DSLR, encourage the move up to Aperture with the line: Pro Performance with iPhoto Simplicity.

No 64 bit Illustrator no upgrades for my firm, guess we'll stay on CS3 for another 2 years. Can't stand these bundles either, we end up paying for a bunch of apps we never use, what a waste. I hate the monopoly Adobe has become in the creative biz.

Do you have Illustrator files that are over 4 Gigs in size? I doubt it.

I don't think believe update is all that bad. $600 for all apps is a steal in my opinion.

As for the monopoly issue, I agree Freehand had some great features and Adobe seems too arrogant to implement them into Illustrator.

Oh, Agreed! That's very true. The nice thing about Aperture 3 is I can do everything in one place - managing photos, uploading them, editing them. No need to open up separate apps like in iPhoto. iPhoto's own tools are ok - very good for quick, one-touch corrections that usually look very good, but I always found my self using its "edit in an external program" feature and having to go into Photoshop or Pixelmator.

What I like about Aperture in particular is its interface: clean and well-organized.

The analogue of Apple Aperture is Adobe Lightroom not Photoshop. And it costs $299 for regular customer and $99 for students

currently, when i import text from photoshop files to flash, either as editable text or vectors or even bitmaps, flash screws with the formatting. and the existing type options simply don't work.

i downloaded their 'text layout' extension (beta) from adobe labs and, almost immediately, stopped using it. it was ridiculously counter-intuitive (even for a beta). i'm stumped. for the life of me, i can't figure out why they can't port the type engine/interface from photoshop or (even better) illustrator.

does anyone know anything about the new text editing feature in flash cs5?